NAME
Catalyst::Plugin::Static::Simple - Make serving static pages painless.
SYNOPSIS
use Catalyst;
MyApp->setup( qw/Static::Simple/ );
DESCRIPTION
The Static::Simple plugin is designed to make serving static content in
your application during development quick and easy, without requiring a
single line of code from you.
It will detect static files used in your application by looking for file
extensions in the URI. By default, you can simply load this plugin and
it will immediately begin serving your static files with the correct
MIME type. The light-weight MIME::Types module is used to map file
extensions to IANA-registered MIME types.
Note that actions mapped to paths using periods (.) will still operate
properly.
You may further tweak the operation by adding configuration options,
described below.
ADVANCED CONFIGURATION
Configuration is completely optional and is specified within
MyApp->config->{static}. If you use any of these options, the module
will probably feel less "simple" to you!
Aborting request logging
Since Catalyst 5.50, there has been added support for dropping logging
for a request. This is enabled by default for static files, as static
requests tend to clutter the log output. However, if you want logging of
static requests, you can enable it by setting
MyApp->config->{static}->{no_logs} to 0.
Forcing directories into static mode
Define a list of top-level directories beneath your 'root' directory
that should always be served in static mode. Regular expressions may be
specified using qr//.
MyApp->config->{static}->{dirs} = [
'static',
qr/^(images|css)/,
];
Including additional directories
You may specify a list of directories in which to search for your static
files. The directories will be searched in order and will return the
first file found. Note that your root directory is not automatically
added to the search path when you specify an include_path. You should
use MyApp->config->{root} to add it.
MyApp->config->{static}->{include_path} = [
'/path/to/overlay',
\&incpath_generator,
MyApp->config->{root}
];
With the above setting, a request for the file /images/logo.jpg will
search for the following files, returning the first one found:
/path/to/overlay/images/logo.jpg
/dynamic/path/images/logo.jpg
/your/app/home/root/images/logo.jpg
The include path can contain a subroutine reference to dynamically
return a list of available directories. This method will receive the $c
object as a parameter and should return a reference to a list of
directories. Errors can be reported using die(). This method will be
called every time a file is requested that appears to be a static file
(i.e. it has an extension).
For example:
sub incpath_generator {
my $c = shift;
if ( $c->session->{customer_dir} ) {
return [ $c->session->{customer_dir} ];
} else {
die "No customer dir defined.";
}
}
Ignoring certain types of files
There are some file types you may not wish to serve as static files.
Most important in this category are your raw template files. By default,
files with the extensions tt, html, and xhtml will be ignored by
Static::Simple in the interest of security. If you wish to define your
own extensions to ignore, use the ignore_extensions option:
MyApp->config->{static}->{ignore_extensions} = [ qw/tt html xhtml/ ];
Ignoring entire directories
To prevent an entire directory from being served statically, you can use
the ignore_dirs option. This option contains a list of relative
directory paths to ignore. If using include_path, the path will be
checked against every included path.
MyApp->config->{static}->{ignore_dirs} = [ qw/tmpl css/ ];
For example, if combined with the above include_path setting, this
ignore_dirs value will ignore the following directories if they exist:
/path/to/overlay/tmpl
/path/to/overlay/css
/dynamic/path/tmpl
/dynamic/path/css
/your/app/home/root/tmpl
/your/app/home/root/css
Custom MIME types
To override or add to the default MIME types set by the MIME::Types
module, you may enter your own extension to MIME type mapping.
MyApp->config->{static}->{mime_types} = {
jpg => 'image/jpg',
png => 'image/png',
};
Apache integration and performance
Optionally, when running under mod_perl, Static::Simple can return
DECLINED on static files to allow Apache to serve the file. A check is
first done to make sure that Apache's DocumentRoot matches your Catalyst
root, and that you are not using any custom MIME types or multiple
roots. To enable the Apache support, you can set the following option.
MyApp->config->{static}->{use_apache} = 1;
By default this option is disabled because after several benchmarks it
appears that just serving the file from Catalyst is the better option.
On a 3K file, Catalyst appears to be around 25% faster, and is 42%
faster on a 10K file. My benchmarking was done using the following
'siege' command, so other benchmarks would be welcome!
siege -u http://server/static/css/10K.css -b -t 1M -c 1
For best static performance, you should still serve your static files
directly from Apache by defining a Location block similar to the
following:
SetHandler default-handler
Bypassing other plugins
This plugin checks for a static file in the prepare_action stage. If the
request is for a static file, it will bypass all remaining
prepare_action steps. This means that by placing Static::Simple before
all other plugins, they will not execute when a static file is found.
This can be helpful by skipping session cookie checks for example. Or,
if you want some plugins to run even on static files, list them before
Static::Simple.
Currently, work done by plugins in any other prepare method will execute
normally.
Debugging information
Enable additional debugging information printed in the Catalyst log.
This is automatically enabled when running Catalyst in -Debug mode.
MyApp->config->{static}->{debug} = 1;
SEE ALSO
Catalyst, Catalyst::Plugin::Static,
AUTHOR
Andy Grundman,
CONTRIBUTORS
Marcus Ramberg,
THANKS
The authors of Catalyst::Plugin::Static:
Sebastian Riedel
Christian Hansen
Marcus Ramberg
For the include_path code from Template Toolkit:
Andy Wardley
COPYRIGHT
This program is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.